Sunday, October 13, 2013

Yoga Fundamentals and More - Eco Friendly Yoga Mat

Yoga is an all-encompassing term used to refer to the many diverse philosophical and spiritual ideologies in India. In the West however, the term yoga refers to the physical conditioning aspect found in yoga defined in the Hindu context. For the Hindu practitioners, the physical component of yoga is meant to be used as a way of training and mastering the body to achieve spiritual enlightenment. For most yogis or yoga practitioners outside of India, yoga remains an excellent system for exercise, and the meditative quality is maintained though the spiritual connotations are lost. The practice of yoga as an exercise requires a yoga mat.

While an eco friendly yoga mat is not strictly part of the ideological practices, they do provide many advantages and are thus fundamental to yoga as an exercise. They provide comfort and stability for the yogi executing asanas, as postures are called in yoga terminology.

These mats are rectangular, and are as long or almost as long as an average man's height. This length is useful in the execution of asana that require the yogi to sit or lie on the floor. Any mat intended to be used for yoga should also be wider than the shoulders of the yogi, since hands and feet need to be set a fair distance apart to achieve strong bases for certain asanas. Mathematics and geometry say that the wider the base of a structure, the more stable it is and less likely to tip over. Understanding this concept is very useful when executing hand stands, back bends, and other balance-centric asanas.

Looking for a mat for yoga exercise can be a challenge, unless you know where to look. The World Wide Web is a good place to start, as it is with almost everything else nowadays. On the World Wide Web you can look up an eco friendly yoga mat, and you will be rewarded with a torrent of information such as brands and models, pictures, videos, and user reviews and testimonials. These can help you learn which brands and models are trustworthy and to compare prices. In your search you will come across many features that may at first seem like value-added options but are in fact very important.

One is the non-slip property of a mat. Non-slip ensures that the mat stays firmly planted while the yogi performs asanas. The usefulness may not seem important for seated and lying positions, but consider standing and inverted positions and you will realize how important non-slip is to safety. Ease of care and cleaning are also things you will want to look out for, because they can maximize the convenience of these mats. Eco-friendliness is also a worthwhile bonus. After all, yoga teaches us to achieve harmony with ourselves and the environment, so why not help protect Mother Nature while you go about your routines? An eco friendly yoga mat is not exactly the most affordable of products, but seeing how useful they are in the practice of yoga, one realizes that they are worth more than the prices they are tagged with.








Robert W. (Bob) Walker reports on a number of natural health and wellness issues and believes the ecological way is the only way. Please visit his blog ecofriendlyyogamatblog.com ecofriendlyyogamatblog.com

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